In the general practice of forming fibrous web materials, such as laid fibrous articles, it has been common to utilize a fibrous sheet of cellulosic or other suitable absorbent material which has been fiberized in a conventional fiberizer, or other shredding or comminuting device, to form discrete fibers. In addition, particles of superabsorbent material have been mixed with the fibers. The fibers and superabsorbent particles have then been entrained in an air stream and directed to a foraminous forming surface upon which the fibers and superabsorbent particles have been deposited to form an absorbent fibrous web. Typically the formed fibrous web has provided an interconnected plurality of appointed, fibrous pads. The fibrous web has been cut or otherwise segmented to provide individual pads. During the manufacturing operations, one or more scarfing operations have been employed to provide multiple functions. For example, the scarfing operation has been employed to level the peaks and valleys from the top of the formed fibrous web so that, from pad to pad along the length of the fibrous web, each pad can have substantially the same basis weight of absorbent material. Additionally, the scarfing operation has been employed to help control and regulate the desired basis weight distributions within each individual pad.
Adjustments to the basis weight distributions have, for example, been made by providing a foraminous forming surface that has predetermined depressions or pocket regions that allow an accumulation of relatively large amounts of absorbent material. Additionally, the location and configuration of the scarfing roll has been selectively adjusted. For example, by reducing the effective gap between the scarfing roll and the forming surface, the scarfing roll can be arranged to remove more material from the fibrous web. The amounts of removed material have been recirculated through the forming process, and have been employed to help fill the deeper pocket regions of the forming surface. The filling of the pocket regions has been accomplished by an over-forming of the pad with the selected absorbent material, and a mechanical redistribution of the absorbent material.
However, typical scarfing systems have provided a relatively course cut of absorbent material leading to higher variation in basis weight from pad to pad. As a result, there has been a continuing need for improved scarfing systems that can reliably produce and maintain a less variable basis weight distribution along the absorbent web.